Friday, March 7, 2014

With Russia and Ukraine hitting the
world's 24 hour news cycle over the past weeks and the threat of sanctions now
hanging over Russia, there is an issue that will affect the geopolitical
picture and how Russia is dealt with, particularly by Europe.

Let's open with this map
from the International Energy Agency, showing the flow of natural gas in
Europe:

Please note that the red lines are
major transit natural gas pipelines that bring the natural gas from the source
area and the blue lines are transmission natural gas pipelines that bring the
gas to local markets for end users. The thickness of the lines provides
us with a relative idea of the volume of natural gas passing through the
pipelines with higher volumes passing through lines that are thickest. There
are ten major pipelines in Russia with eight of them being export pipelines
that carry Russia gas to Eastern and Western European markets through Ukraine,
Belarus and across the Baltic Sea. The five pipelines that transport the
gas to European markets have a total capacity of 6 Tcf per day, to put this
number into perspective, Canada exported 3.274 Tcf to the United States in all of
2011 according to the Canadian Gas Association!

You'll notice something right away. The red lines are thickest on the east side of the map for this reason:

According to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration EIA), Russia is the world's second largest producer
of natural gas (and the world's third largest producer of oil after Saudi
Arabia and the United States). Russia holds the world's largest proven
reserves of natural gas at 1688 trillion cubic feet as shown in this chart, 26
percent of the world's total, dwarfing the natural gas reserves of the United
States by a 5 to 1 margin:

As you saw on the map above, most of
Russia's natural gas reserves are located in Western Siberia with three fields
alone, Urengoy, Medvezh-ye and Yamburg accounting for more than 40 percent of
Russia's total reserves. Three-quarters of Russia's natural gas is
produced by state-run Gazprom which also controls more than 65 percent of
proven reserves. Here is a chart showing Russia's daily natural gas
production by company for 2012, the latest full year for which data is
available:

In 2012, total natural gas
production reached 23.8 Tcf, second to the United States which produced 24.1
Tcf from a far smaller reserve base. This means that unless America's
natural gas reserve base increases rapidly, likely through the drilling of
unconventional reservoirs (i.e. fracking), the U.S. ultimate reserve life index is far, far shorter than that of Russia.

As noted above, Russia is a massive
exporter of natural gas. Here is a pie chart showing the destination of
Russia's natural gas:

You will notice that 24 percent of
Russia's natural gas is exported to Germany, 24 percent to Eastern Europe, 11
percent to Italy, 10 percent to Western Europe and 6 percent to each of the
United Kingdom and France. This is where the geopolitical intrigue
enters the stage.

Germany is the largest energy
consumer in Europe outside of Russia, and the world's seventh largest energy
consumer. Unfortunately, with a paucity of hydrocarbon-based natural
resources, Germany must rely on imports to fulfill its energy needs, a point of
vulnerability.

Let's open this section with a
graphic showing the sector-by-sector demand for natural gas in Germany's
economy:

According to the EIA, Germany has almost no natural gas reserves as
shown here:

As a consequence, Germany produces
negligible volumes of natural gas when compared to its consumption levels as
shown here:

Germany's production of natural gas
is expected to decline by an average of 5 percent per year over the coming
years from its already low level.

This has led to a need for natural
gas imports as shown here:

Germany's natural gas imports have
risen from 2.15 Tcf in 1991, hitting a peak of 2.95 Tcf in 2009 and have
fallen back to 2.45 Tcf in 2012 because of increased energy efficiencies.
Germany has no liquified natural gas terminals (LNG), so it must rely on
overland pipelines for its natural gas imports. Here is a
map showing Germany's internal natural gas infrastructure and the entry points
for natural gas from outside sources:

In 2011, Germany was 84.9 percent dependent on imports for its
natural gas needs. Germany has no compulsory natural gas storage
facilities, however, there are 47 gas storage facilities with total capacity of
738 Bcf.

Now, let's look at where Germany
gets its natural gas imports from:

In 2010, Russia was the largest
source of Germany's natural gas imports at 39 percent followed by Norway at 35
percent and the Netherlands at 22 percent.

Germany and, by extension, the rest
of Europe since Germany is its largest economy, is vulnerable to supply cuts from Russia since it is unlikely that
either Norway or the Netherlands could step in quickly to fill any shortfall,
particularly given that natural gas production from the North Sea is expected to
decline by 2.6 percent annually between 2010 and 2020.
Russia has had supply disputes with nations before, including Ukraine
where Russia halted gas supplies for 13 days in 2009, a dispute that affected
supplies in Southeastern Europe as well. Russia also threatened to cut
off supplies to Belarus and Georgia in late 1996, showing that Russia is not
afraid to use its weight as the world's key natural gas supplier and holder of over one-quarter of the world's reserves to pressure
outside nations to "see things its way".

8 comments:

Great post, Your article shows tells me you must have a lot of background in this topic. Can you direct me to other articles about this? I will recommend this article to my friends as well. Keep it up.

This is exactly the reason why President Obama and the US in general is so misguided about trying to force Russia to change whatever its priority is with Ukraine and Crimea. Yes We(the US) can bark and enact sanctions all we want but at the end of the day Europe is not likely to follow suit. The puts us out on a limb for what, a nation with huge debt, small population(46mil), a part of that population being very pro-Russian, and its next door to Russia. It already was a democracy, this whole thing is something we have little to gain from. They let us through the UN destrory Libya. Russia sat back while we bombed and turned Libya into a total shithole, why don't we sit back and let Russia do its thing. What Obama should have just done is say we don't approve of these actions and Diplomacy should be the way to go about these type of things and leave it at that. We can't control small countries why would Russia be bothered following our demands.

Russia holds all the cards. America should choose the battles it wants to fight, and this is not one of them. Add to the need Europe has for Russian gas the three other issues making this a nonstarter are location, location, and location.

This is a very narrow analysis on the effect of sanctions on Russia’s economy and concentrated on gas supplies. Europe depends on Russian gas as much as Russia depends on foreign exports and investments. Russia is an export oriented economy, with huge consumers’ appetite for imported goods (beginning from foods and finishing with cars), which makes it very vulnerable. During the first day of Russia's interventions into Ukrainian Crimea, Russian MICEX (stock market index) plunged 8% erasing $60 billion of Russian market's capitalization, while Russian Central bank (with only $500 billion reserves) spend $11 billion to mitigate depreciation of rouble (just one day). Oil price of $80 per barrel is a critical point for Russian state budget, and this price can be easily achieved by US (influencing oil producing Arab countries) and EU joint efforts. Add to this the subsequent inevitable inflation and frozen social spending (with the average pension of $150 per month) and you will see massive insurgency in Russia itself. Russian billionaires (among whom there are Putin’s closest corrupt associates) keep their multi-billion savings in hard currency (guess which one?) in foreign banks including US and EU. Rich Russians possess huge investments in Europe and US - real estate, yachts, bank accounts that they never will be willing to convert in crappy rouble and bring back to Russia. Their children live and study abroad. Russian companies have about $700 billion liabilities to western financial organizations while in many cases holdings of local oligarchs are collateralized against those loans. With declining stock market, margin calls will be the first sign of the forthcoming economic problems. Regarding gas supplies, it will depend on Europe’s unity against Russia. If EU countries, as major consumers of Russian gas, decide to set a lower price Russia will have no choice other than to accept it – as Russian economy is not resilient at all. Cut gas supplies for a couple of days and we will see a huge spillover effect throughout the entire Russian economy. So, if the world’s leading countries decide to cool down Putin’s groundless ambitions to rebuild Russian empire, the Evil country can be kneed down very quickly.

Wait a second... Wasn't Germany's huge export and little import the cause for many troubles in the last couple of years? Could the import of oil and gas from, let's say, Canada or the US (which seems to be a more expensive option because it wasn't considered as an option before) aleviate the dense economic crisis in Europe? Germans would have to pay higher import rates and this would balance the import-export ratio. So one could say that the Crimean crisis has a positive side efect for Europe's economy..

I am always impressed with comments that ignore what it is the Ukrainian people might like to do. Also the tiny sanctions already applied have frightened Russian into divesting itself of outside investments but also frightened investors into getting their money out of Russia. Outflows are reckoned at 70 billion in Q1 alone compared to about 65 billion in all last year. Bank loans have dried up, interest rates are up etc. I am certain that Putin doesn't care as he has set out to restore the Russian Empire

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About Me

I have been an avid follower of the world's political and economic scene since the great gold rush of 1979 - 1980 when it seemed that the world's economic system was on the verge of collapse. I am most concerned about the mounting level of government debt and the lack of political will to solve the problem. Actions need to be taken sooner rather than later when demographic issues will make solutions far more difficult. As a geoscientist, I am also concerned about the world's energy future; as we reach peak cheap oil, we need to find viable long-term solutions to what will ultimately become a supply-demand imbalance.